Before, I could never really justify paying hundreds of dollars for a bunch of stuff I would never use. But since my memory seems to be getting worse on a daily basis, I needed some sort of calendar/task list and I got a crazy deal on one.. so I couldn’t pass it up.

I got an HTC P4300, which is wicked amazing. Full slide out keyboard, micro-sd slot, lots of built in memory, nice big touch screen.. I had to install a hack to upgrade it to Windows Mobile 6, but other than that, this thing had everything I wanted out of the box.

But the problem with this thing is, when you actually try to use it as… well, a phone.

My first big complaint is the notification. When I have a missed call (and I think this is Windows Mobile in general) it puts a stupid little button in the bottom left hand side of the screen saying “notification”… that’s it. I had to install an app on my home page just so I could at least see when I had missed calls.

Another annoying thing is that when I’m talking to people, I touch all sorts of buttons with my ear/cheek on the touchscreen.

Besides that, the ringer isn’t very loud, and it doesn’t vibrate very heavily.. so needless to say, i’ve missed quite a few calls.

I’ve noticed this as pattern for a lot of Smartphones as well.

I think the manufacturers are so caught up with adding all the bells and whistles a PDA could possibly have, that they completely ignore the phone side of it.

Oh well, I guess that’s what happens when you make something “smart”.. it loses it’s common sense.

I’ve heard from the rumor mill that a lot of what is in the current beta doesn’t address one of the bigger problems with the current build of Windows Vista, like problems getting Windows XP and Windows Vista machines to network together, though they do list “Improved Windows Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios”, but who knows exactly what that means.

One of the bigger fixes from what I’ve seen will be the updated driver support, and updated hardware support, so all of you early adopters that had problems with Vista not being able to detect your cd burners and video cards might have some luck now. But the big question will be, will people try it again, or will they stick with Windows XP and wait patiently for Windows XP Service Pack 3 to come out?

There are a host of reliability and performance fixes listed as well, like less CPU utilization in IE7, better performance accessing network shares, better battery life on some laptop hardware, etc.

I think overall they’re stepping in the right direction. Their list of supported hardware almost doubled from November last year to July this year, supported software has increased almost ten fold since launch.

I just wish they would hurry up and finish it already.. but it’s Microsoft, so I guess people are used to the “hurry up and wait” mentality. Too bad I’m not.

If you want more info about Windows Vista Service Pack 1, check out this Windows Vista Blog post.